My Weekly Book

By reading this I was embarking on a project – a bid to tackle all the outstanding Grishams not yet read by me. If thrillers are my favourite genre, and a genre that I try to write in, then it was simply ludicrous that I hadn’t made my way fully through the Grisham oeuvre. I’d thoroughly enjoyed everything I’d read so far and I’m beginning to get a feel for what I think is this man’s main plot device – the stacking of the odds so completely against the hero, heroine or combination thereof that it seems impossible they will ever escape. The puzzle then generally becomes not *whether* he, she or they will get out of it, but *how*. Of course, this formula is prone to being turned on its head as it is in The Partner - easily my favourite Grisham so far.

And what better way to work out this theme than to make the hero of your book an 11-year-old boy from a poor, dysfunctional family who ends up with all the resources of the FBI and the American legal system ranged against him? The author creates nail-biting suspense as we watch this poor kid get himself deeper and deeper into the mire. And the book remains impossible to put down as he and his newly-acquired and enigmatic female lawyer embark on the chess game required to get him and his family out of this mess and to safety. An accomplished thriller and a suspenseful, enjoyable read.

It’s a quibble but it does irritate the hell out of me the way that a Grisham title often only has the slightest relevance to the contents of the book. It means I can never remember what on earth I’ve read and what I haven’t.

My next stop was The Chamber which was thought-provoking and, on the whole, satisfying but far removed from the usual Grisham formula. And it took me weeks to read – see the entry below for more details.

These two behind me, my next stop will be The Rainmaker.

This entry was posted on Saturday, January 21st, 2006 at 4:57 pm and is filed under 2005 - Books read. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.